Columbia University Instructor Cancels Class for Anti-Israel Protest, Day After Radicals Storm Campus Building

A Columbia University instructor who defended last spring’s illegal pro-Hamas encampments canceled his classes Thursday so students could attend an anti-Israel protest—one day after radicals stormed a campus building at Columbia’s sister school, Barnard College.

A source with knowledge of the circumstances told the Washington Free Beacon that the lecturer is Conor Cullen, who teaches philosophy at Columbia and has consistently supported anti-Israel encampments and protests on campus. He dismissed his contemporary civilization class after students asked for time off to "support the student protest movement" and attend an anti-Israel rally.

One of Cullen’s students, who declined to be named, said he and his classmate were "in shock" after the professor asked students to take a "blind vote" on whether to cancel the class.

Columbia called Cullen’s decision a "serious breach of University policy" and said it would be "investigated and addressed swiftly."

"[W]e apologize to our students and community members for this unacceptable infringement on our core academic mission," said Columbia in a statement.

On Wednesday, an anti-Israel mob stormed a Barnard building, assaulting and injuring a staff member. The radicals were protesting the expulsion of two Barnard students who were part of a group that rushed into a Columbia class and handed out flyers depicting a trampled Star of David.

Another anti-Israel rally protesting the Barnard students’ expulsion was scheduled for Thursday. That morning, Cullen "mentioned that a noticeably large chunk of students was missing from the class and that he suspected these students were skipping out to support the protests against the disciplinary action of these two Barnard (anti-semitic) students," the unnamed student wrote in a letter to Columbia officials.

"He then opened up the class for discussion in which two students voiced their opinions in support of the class being canceled to support the student protest movement and the protest that was to occur on the main campus later today at 12:45," the student continued. "Meanwhile, the rest of the class stayed silent, eyes looking to one another in shock."

"Our professor then instructed the class to close their eyes and take a blind vote on whether to cancel class, not cancel class, or not vote," the student wrote. "This resulted in him deciding to cancel the class as well as his 2:10 - 4:00 pm class section later in the day as well."

The student said the cancellation was "not acceptable and should not be tolerated," adding that the university community "needs to wake up!"

Two anti-Semitic student groups—Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter—led the Wednesday mob that stormed Barnard’s Milbank Hall. They clashed with security guards, sending one to the hospital, held a dean captive, covered up security cameras, broke into an office, vandalized walls, and forced class cancellations. The culprits got off scot-free after the administration vowed not to pursue disciplinary action, shielded them from police as they exited the building after occupying it for over six hours, and agreed to continue negotiations the next day in a private meeting.

The student radicals were aiming to pressure the Barnard administration to reverse its expulsion of two students involved in a separate anti-Semitic incident at Columbia. The pair were among a group of keffiyeh-clad student activists who rushed into an Israeli history class and targeted Jewish students with anti-Semitic flyers that glorified Hamas, showed a trampled Star of David, and advocated violence. A week later, anti-Israel student radicals with CUAD dumped cement into a campus building’s sewage system.

Cullen has long defended the anti-Israel protest movement that swept Columbia following Hamas’s mass attacks on Israeli civilians. He was among the untenured faculty that signed a letter expressing "solidarity" with the demonstrators and denouncing police and administrators’ efforts to dismantle the illegal pro-Hamas encampments at the university.

In another letter, Cullen defended the encampments and said the school had "disproportionately acted to silence one voice in particular—the voice of those protesting against the ongoing oppression and killing of Palestinians." Cullen also signed a letter opposing a congressional investigation into campus anti-Semitism, claiming that lawmakers were "leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of ‘woke indoctrination.’"

"To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term," the letter read. "Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity."

CUAD, meanwhile, claimed Barnard disciplined two more students on Friday, expelling one and suspending another for nearly two years for participating in the storming of a Columbia campus building last spring.

"We WILL NOT let this stand. Barnard, you expel ONE of us, and a HUNDRED more will rise up!" CUAD wrote in an Instagram post. "In the face of unprecedented and disparate institutional repression, we must fight back and stand behind our peers. We must agitate, disrupt, and resist."

In a statement to the Free Beacon, Barnard president Laura Rosenbury said the university cannot comment on ongoing disciplinary procedures.

"Under federal law, we cannot comment on the academic and disciplinary records of students. That said, as a matter of principle and policy, Barnard will always take decisive action to protect our community as a place where learning thrives, individuals feel safe, and higher education is celebrated. This means upholding the highest standards and acting when those standards are threatened. When rules are broken, when there is no remorse, no reflection, and no willingness to change, we must act," Rosenbury said.

"Expulsion is always an extraordinary measure, but so too is our commitment to respect, inclusion, and the integrity of the academic experience. At Barnard, we always fiercely defend our values. At Barnard, we always reject harassment and discrimination in all forms. And at Barnard, we always do what is right, not what is easy," she added.

CUAD noted that the most recent expulsion came one day after the Department of Justice’s task force to combat anti-Semitism warned Columbia that it may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty from illegal discrimination, a violation of federal law. The task force announced Friday that Columbia was among 10 schools it would visit to meet with university leadership and impacted students to determine whether any disciplinary actions are justified for the schools’ failure to shield Jewish students and staff from illegal discrimination.

Columbia has become increasingly aggressive toward anti-Semitism since President Donald Trump took office. It promptly suspended one of the students who stormed the Israeli history in January, for example. By contrast, the university over the summer dropped the overwhelming majority of the suspensions leveled on students who participated in illegal anti-Israel protests last spring.

Cullen did not respond to a request for comment.

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